Making minimalistic theme for 8520, have somewhat technical questions

[mymoon]

Ok, as a title suggest, I'm making a bright minimalist theme and have a bunch of odd questions:

01 - Battery icon: does it only work on 10 levels max? I've only seen icons that show battery and 5 (up to 10) levels of its emptiness.
I'd like to have a "written" battery status but I don't want it to say 90%, 80%, 70% etc. Instead, I want it to use all the numbers from 100 to 0 where at 10% I's have yellow LED flashing.

02 - Wi-fi signal indicator.
Theme builder shows a wi-fi signal strength indicator though in about a year or so of having BB8520 and using wi-fi with it, I've never seen this signal indicator working. The only way I know my wi-fi is working by a) having its name along with carrier name (ie. Vodaphone - Mywifihotspot) and b) the wi-fi icon is bright (I plan to change it so when wi-fi is not used, I'll make its icon transparent). Makes sense?

03 - Does BB respond faster with less icons on its home page? Also do sliding docks affect response speed? I think answer is "yes" to both but I'd just want to make sure.

04 - I'm using Twitter for BB and Opera a lot and am planing to make icons for those two, too. How do I "tell" theme builder these icons are for ie. Opera and how do I change them from their default icons?

05 - What was "the fastest" or "most responsive" theme you've had so far?

06 - Is there a way to "disable"/"delete" certain icons?
For example; I receive SMS, MMS and emails in my "Messages" so I don't "need" "SMS And MMS" and "Email" icons in my application list (or whatever you call that part when you come from "home" by clicking the BB button on phone).

07 - Is there a way for my clock on "Home" to show seconds, too?

08 - Does size of icons affect overall speed and performance?


I'm sure I had a few more questions but I can't remember them now as I'm typing.

Thanks for any answer.
Cheers.

[russnash]

I'm going to answer a few of these while input comes to mind:

3) Yes, more code equals a less responsive homescreen, however, if you write your code well enough and even go as far as cutting out tb altogether (see my post on compiling themes by hand) there is no reason you cannot have a generous amount of homescreen features and a responsive theme.

4) As far as I've seen so far you cannot skin icons that aren't listed in TB.

6) You cannot delete icons, however you could always create a sub-folder within the theme and move the icons into it in TB. However, I strongly suggest leaving icon placement at default if you are making a theme for public use.

7) Nope. Not that I've found.

8) Smaller icons will take less memory, however, I would try to avoid too much resizing through SVG code as this makes the rendering code work harder plus the results look nasty.

Russ

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[Raestloz]

I'll answer, but specifically for OS5 (OS6 may have different behavior)

Originally Posted by mymoon

Ok, as a title suggest, I'm making a bright minimalist theme and have a bunch of odd questions:

01 - Battery icon: does it only work on 10 levels max? I've only seen icons that show battery and 5 (up to 10) levels of its emptiness.

Battery icon has multiple states, spanning from completely empty (0) all the way to maximum (100) in multiples of 10 and unknown. If you want it to say like "battery at 95%" or "battery at 17%", it's not possible. Also, as far as I remember SVG doesn't have the event call for "when battery falls below x"

02 - Wi-fi signal indicator.
Theme builder shows a wi-fi signal strength indicator though in about a year or so of having BB8520 and using wi-fi with it, I've never seen this signal indicator working. The only way I know my wi-fi is working by a) having its name along with carrier name (ie. Vodaphone - Mywifihotspot) and b) the wi-fi icon is bright (I plan to change it so when wi-fi is not used, I'll make its icon transparent). Makes sense?

Wi-Fi signal strength doesn't appear whatsoever. Wi-Fi icon can be changed, but it requires manual SVG coding. Also, it will only appear in homescreen (or lockscreen too, if you put the proper SVG for it)

03 - Does BB respond faster with less icons on its home page? Also do sliding docks affect response speed? I think answer is "yes" to both but I'd just want to make sure.

Yes. Specifically, the more items the BlackBerry need to keep track of (could be anything: images, icons) the slower it will be. It's not just the visible elements. Invisible elements will still consume processing power

04 - I'm using Twitter for BB and Opera a lot and am planing to make icons for those two, too. How do I "tell" theme builder these icons are for ie. Opera and how do I change them from their default icons?

You can't change a 3rd party app's icon. You can only change icons you see in Theme Builder

05 - What was "the fastest" or "most responsive" theme you've had so far?

Precision Zen and Precision AT&T. No, I'm serious.

06 - Is there a way to "disable"/"delete" certain icons?
For example; I receive SMS, MMS and emails in my "Messages" so I don't "need" "SMS And MMS" and "Email" icons in my application list (or whatever you call that part when you come from "home" by clicking the BB button on phone).

No. You can arrange app hierarchy, but you can't remove icons

07 - Is there a way for my clock on "Home" to show seconds, too?

As far as I know, no.

08 - Does size of icons affect overall speed and performance?

Icons that are too big or too small will be scaled down or up respectively. I don't know if it will impact performance noticeably, but for best result, it's better to make images (not only icons) in the correct size, so that your BlackBerry doesn't have to upscale or downscale them

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[mymoon]

Thank you both for reply.

I'm still in the process of playing with icons (resizing and whatnots). I plan to resize around 45px and leave extra 7px space so the highlight icon comes around just fine (this is all knowing I'm using 52px icons). Then again: is it better to use just normal icons, ditch focus icons altogether and use highlight icons OR ditch highlight icon and use focus icons? The first option would use less space and memory. Besides, all the resizing is done manually using Photoshop from their original size 512px. Some icons were already made and some were had to be made from existing ones. Also, I checked. Icons I'm using are freeware for noncommercial use.
I answered myself on the 2nd question when I turned off wi-fi completely and so the icon disappeared completely. I've never had it turned off since there's always a free wi-fi around I can leech on

Too bad about the battery indicator thing. But it's something I can live without.
Again, thanks for your responses.

[Raestloz]

Originally Posted by mymoon

Thank you both for reply.

I'm still in the process of playing with icons (resizing and whatnots). I plan to resize around 45px and leave extra 7px space so the highlight icon comes around just fine (this is all knowing I'm using 52px icons). Then again: is it better to use just normal icons, ditch focus icons altogether and use highlight icons OR ditch highlight icon and use focus icons? The first option would use less space and memory. Besides, all the resizing is done manually using Photoshop from their original size 512px. Some icons were already made and some were had to be made from existing ones. Also, I checked. Icons I'm using are freeware for noncommercial use.
I answered myself on the 2nd question when I turned off wi-fi completely and so the icon disappeared completely. I've never had it turned off since there's always a free wi-fi around I can leech on

Too bad about the battery indicator thing. But it's something I can live without.
Again, thanks for your responses.

If you mean "ditch focus icon" as in "use transparent image for the focus icon", then when you highlight the respective app, it will simply disappear

If you mean "ditch focus icon" as in "use the same image as the normal icon", then I doubt it will save that much space. I'm under the impression that normal and focus icons are stored as separate entity within the theme, as such using the same source for both normal and focus icon will simply cause two identical icons to be stored separately

What do you mean "highlight" icon? Are you talking about the "cursor"? (I don't really remember its actual name) From my point of view, it's not recommended to ditch it, as it will improve visibility of your icons

Technically speaking, you can use icons of size smaller than stock, as long as your icon will consume the original space (that is, the icon itself may only be 20x20, but the image must span across 52x52, meaning there are 32x32 pixels worth of empty space, could be transparency or solid color)

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[micjenks]

Just want to mention that if you use composer you can create your own icons for any application(Twitter and Opera for example) you just can't add them to anything other than the home screen so its usually not a good idea for a publically available theme since 2 people rarely desire the same icon configuration.

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